Things that unoriginal side projects should have in common

It’s a long title. I want to execute more than one unoriginal side project, so as many factors should be shared as possible, as easily as possible.

I’m not making original side projects anymore – I’m hunting for financially viable ideas that *have already been executed*.

I’ll cut down the scope and clone them as quickly as possible, and set them free. Each project will get sharper, build on the tools from the last, and eventually they will start finding a base.

Here’s a list of things that all of my unoriginal side projects will have.

  • They start free or very cheap, and slowly boil the frog (apparently that’s not a real thing).
  • A user can join as soon as they land on the site, and from every page on the site, and easily add the rest of their team. There’s access levels for different users (Owner, Editor, Viewer, for example).
  • Users don’t have remember an email and password – can sign in with google, github, and office 365. There is email & password signin though.
  • Billing uses Stripe Billing pre-built tools, to save writing that whole layer.
  • From the get-go, users get a subdomain for their tenant/team. E.g. acme.unoriginalsaas.com
  • All of these unoriginal SaaS’s are an MVP. Throwing mud until it sticks. They must be serverless or zero maintenance. Not buying a domain name, standing up a server, buying a g email address and all that shit for an app that in all likelihood will have a quick death. It takes 6 months for a side project to get some SEO results/organic visitors cranking, and I don’t want dollars burning away in the process.
  • If e-commerce related, they are shopify-first.
  • Comprehensive getting started docs and videos.
  • They’re easy to cast a net with well targeted SEO. Templates, recipes, case studies, documentation.
  • The marketing site is very easy to sign into and quickly add an article (e.g. wordpress level of 5-minute-article)
  • All are API first, and can be consumed as an API (assuming there’s comprehensive documentation). This allows a faster road to app stores and integrations.
  • Where possible, the tools will use each other. E.g. A support ticket tool will be useful to all other platforms
  • They need to be delivered quick. 3 month (at night time, not full time!) build, a month of documentation and SEO.

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